Bilingual Christmas Traditions

lifeatthezoo | December 13, 2013 | Bilingual Families, Christmas | No Comments

Many of you will know that we are a Bilingual household. Well, trying to be. We haven’t QUITE succeeded yet, but the kids have a good understanding of German (I am Austrian) and of course fluent in English. The Boy is starting to speak more and more German and taking an interest in the language – and I have is VERY multi cultural school to thank for that. Almost EVERY child has a second language in the family. So speaking two languages is “cool”. I digress.

For me being bilingual, is not just about language, but about culture too. You can’t call yourself Austrian AND British and not follow some of the traditions in both countries. Every year we have our very own St Martin’s Laterne, we celebrate Three Kings Day – though that is more part of the Spanish “bit in me” and have Santa Stockings. We celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve and then Santa visits us to fill the Stockings on Christmas night. We eat Goose with Knoedl and have Christmas Puddings for after. I bake Austrian Christmas Cookies and we eat them with Mince Pies.

Yep. How we love to mix our traditions and have our children enjoy a bit of both!

The lovely people from Rosetta Stone kindly sent us some Christmas Crackers to make – warms my crafty heart indeed and the kids adored making them and they are the perfect “British Addition” to our Bilingual Christmas. So glad they sent them, else I would have probably forgotten them!

Ahem, I am so keeping the box afterwards for “storage of crafty things”.

Love the addition of some multi lingual fun!

The details such as the pom pom hat “had” the girl. She couldn’t get enough of it!

Belt stickers added by 4 year old.

We added some choc coins and the girls loved adding the stickers.

How I love being part of a bilingual family with the opportunity to pick and choose our favourite traditions! Thanks for reminding us of this Rosetta Stone and for sending us such lovely crackers to play with.

Have you got any country specific favourite Christmas traditions?

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